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The Data Mining and Analytics Team focuses on extracting the dynamics of complex systems from real-world data.

We build unique and innovative data systems that capture in unprecedented detail the processes that lead to important scientific innovation. Combining expertise in data wrangling, network science, and advanced statistical modeling, we push at the interdisciplinary boundaries of the life sciences, medicine, clinical research, data science, and digital humanities.

Contrary to concerns of some critics, we present evidence that biomedical research is not dominated by a small handful of model organisms. An exhaustive analysis of research literature suggests that the diversity of experimental organisms in biomedical research has increased substantially since 1975. . .

The computational turn in the humanities has precipitated the need for sustainable software development projects that are specifically focused on humanities research problems, and the need for graduate and undergraduate training models that address the trans-disciplinary nature of computational humanities research.

Making its scientists’ research findings available for the benefit of the whole of humanity, free of charge whenever possible (Open Access), is a key aspiration of the Max Planck Society. Out of this spirit, the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” was initiated by the Max Planck Society in October 2003.

Manfred Laubichler was interviewed for an article by Chelsea Wald about the Biologische Versuchsanstalt in Vienna, published in the recent issue of Nautilus. From the article:

In 1911, Popular Science Monthly published an enthusiastic description of a young, private experimental-biology institute in Vienna, lauding its “remarkable scientific productivity resulting from only eight years of research.”

The author, zoologist Charles Lincoln Edwards, attributed the success of the Biologische Versuchsanstalt (Insitute of Experimental Biology) to its many advanced experimental devices. The institute, popularly known as the Vivarium, boasted a wide range of terrariums, which housed hundreds of organisms, from glow-worms to kangaroos, at strictly controlled temperatures, humidity, pressure, and light levels. That wasn’t always easy—the Vivarium had to adopt or invent many cutting-edge technologies, including an early air-conditioning system. It was “a pioneer in the use of the carbonic-acid cooling machine for maintaining a cold environment,” wrote Edwards. With the help of circulating salt water and a condenser, four rooms were kept at temperatures ranging from 5°C to 20°C.

The idea of using various apparatuses to control the living conditions of plants and animals for study was new; before that, scientists mainly observed their subjects in nature. At the Vivarium, the focus was on raising many generations under the same conditions in order to probe questions of heredity and development—a unique approach at the time, and one that many consider a precursor to today’s research on evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo-devo.”

The Global Classroom project was recently fingered by ASU News as breaking down the boundaries of the traditional classroom. You can read the entire article here.

One of the most powerful examples of a mediated classroom is located in the C-wing of the Life Sciences building, where “Sustainable Cities: a Contradiction in Terms?” is being taught simultaneously to students at ASU and at Leuphana University in Germany.

Twenty ASU students sit at tabletop computers surrounded by numerous large screens, taught in person by two of the top professors at ASU. Another 20 are tuned in from Germany. Still another 20 students from each country are in adjoining classrooms working on research projects, as part of a second cohort of the three-semester class.

One of the talking points at the History of Science Society's 2013 business meeting this Sunday was the recent report by the Committee for Research & the Profession's (CoRP) Data-Management Task-Force on the NSF's new requirements concerning data management and data management plans. ASU's Julia Damerow, Erick Peirson, Matt Chew, and Manfred Laubichler all participated in the task force. The report reflects on the what constitutes data in the history of science, what it means to preserve those data, what should and should not be shared, and a constellation of other issues surrounding the availability of historical research data. Especially in the context of quantitative and computational approaches to historical research, these considerations are pressing and immediate.

The report considers two potential initiatives by the History of Science Society to address data management needs: project-based bibliographies, and an HSS data repository.

The existing system of repositories has gaps in it of two types. First, many historians of science, especially, but not exclusively independent scholars, may not have access to suitable institutional repositories for their data. Second, for all historians there are unresolved questions how the cost of long-term preservation and exposure of data will be met. ... It may well be, therefore, that such a repository shall be an essential component of history of science research in the future. Such a repository would bring together (if not necessarily uniquely hold) data sets that could be constructed according to accepted standards but with the added features needed to make them particularly useful for historians of science. ... In so doing, it would become, ideally, a site where data sets created for one purpose could be merged and manipulated to address new questions. ... Such a fully developed repository could streamline data management for historians of science and be a model for other learned societies.

The report was published in the October edition of the HSS newsletter, and can be found here.